US Senator Bob Menendez pleaded not guilty on Wednesday (27 September) to charges of taking bribes from three New Jersey businessmen while calls for his resignation from fellow Democrats are growing. But to those who took the time to read the district court of New York’s 39-page sealed indictment of Menendez, his wife and the three ‘businessmen’, it is clear that the US law enforcement has followed Menendez’s every move, probably since 2018, and has built a solid dossier that may send him, his wife, and the other three defendants to jail. To Europeans, the Menendez case bears a striking resemblance to Qatargate, the still-unfolding scandal which revealed how foreign governments, namely Qatar and Morocco, funnelled via their secret services hundreds of thousands of euros into the hands of a ring of European Parliament lawmakers eager to render various “services”. In the case of Menendez, it was the secret services of Egypt that reportedly paid him and his wife hundreds of thousands of dollars. The kickback was for ensuring that the multi-billion dollar US military aid to Egypt kept flowing, while in reality, it should have been stopped or frozen under conditionalities, including issues such as human rights. There is a “Hollywood” element in both scandals: In the case of Eva Kailli, it was her companion. For Menendez, it was the girlfriend, whom he married in 2020. Both obviously played a substantial role. In the EU case, NGOs were set up to help fund the scheme, while in the Menendez case, his wife set up a consultancy, saying, as quoted in the indictment: “Every time I’m in a middle person for a deal, I am asking to be paid, and this is my consulting company”. There are also some differences. | 
No comments:
Post a Comment